This week Moderna "said it is on track to report early data from a late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine next month, reports Reuters, "offering the clearest timeline yet for when the world will know whether it is effective." The company, one of the front-runners in the global race to produce vaccines to protect against COVID-19, said an independent data monitoring committee is expected to conduct an interim review of its ongoing 30,000-person trial in November... The company said it is preparing to distribute the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, and expects to be able to produce 20 million doses by the end of the year, and between 500 million and 1 billion in 2021. Moderna said infection rates in the trial were on track with expectations... Moderna said it expects two-month follow-up safety data, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in the second half of November, after which it will file for an emergency use authorization.

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"Development of Pyston, a variant of the Python runtime that uses just-in-time compilation to speed up the execution of Python programs, is back on again," reports InfoWorld — after a hiatus that began in 2017: Picking up where Dropbox left off, a new development team has released Pyston 2.0. Pyston provides what is ultimately intended to be a drop-in replacement for the standard Python runtime, CPython. It's compatible with Python 3.8, so programs that runs with that version of Python should run as-is on Pyston... One of the goals of the project was to remain as close as possible to the original implementation of CPython, since many third-party projects make assumptions about CPython behavior. Thus Pyston 2.0 began with the existing CPython codebase and added features from Pyston 1.0 that worked well, such as caching attributes and JITting. Pyston's JIT no longer uses LLVM, but DynASM to emit assembly directly... [U]nlike the original Pyston incarnation, the new version is closed-source for the time being, as its new stewards determine their business model.

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"BDY electronics, a Chinese laptop manufacturer, has unveiled an all-new 13.3-inch laptop sporting Longsoon's new Dragon Core 3A4000 quad-core 14nm CPU," reports Tom's Hardware: The biggest feature of this laptop is the CPU, featuring Longsoon's latest 14nm quad-core 3A4000 CPU. Longsoon claims the CPU is 100% faster than the previous generation 3A3000 and is comparable in performance to AMD's "Excavator" cores used in the A8-7680 Godavari architecture. Of course, this demonstrates how far behind Longsoon is from TSMC and Intel in performance, speed, and efficiency of its latest node. However, the chairman of Loongsoon Technologies, Hu Weiwu, says, "14nm and 28nm (for its GPU node) is enough for 90% of applications.," so it appears the company isn't too worried about catching up to the performance leaders like Intel and AMD. Due to this laptop being in the Chinese market, Windows is not supported at all. It only runs Chinese "domestic operating systems" that are typically modified versions of Linux. Fortunately, this does mean you can install any Linux flavor you want on the laptop, which can be handy if you don't want to run China-specific apps only. Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm points out that Loongson's upcoming 3a5000 CPU "will be a 12nm CPU that is 50% faster than the 3A4000."

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CNN reports: Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is the only moon in our solar system that has a thick atmosphere. It's four times denser than Earth's. And now, scientists have discovered a molecule in it that has never been found in any other atmosphere. The particle is called cyclopropenylidene, or C3H2, and it's made of carbon and hydrogen. This simple carbon-based molecule could be a precursor that contributes to chemical reactions that may create complex compounds. And those compounds could be the basis for potential life on Titan. The molecule was first noticed as researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile. This radio telescope observatory captures a range of light signatures, which revealed the molecule among the unique chemistry of Titan's atmosphere. The study published earlier this month in the Astronomical Journal... "We're trying to figure out if Titan is habitable," said Rosaly Lopes, a senior research scientist and Titan expert at JPL, in a statement. "So we want to know what compounds from the atmosphere get to the surface, and then, whether that material can get through the ice crust to the ocean below, because we think the ocean is where the habitable conditions are."

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There weren't many blogs in the aftermath of the 2000 election, but Scripting News was here, covering the Florida recount. Here's the archive for November and December 2000.

In 1962 Sean Connery became the first actor to appear in movies as secret agent James Bond, and according to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 was "The best of the many Bonds, by far." An anonymous reader writes: Connery influenced the character deeply. The Huffington Post once wrote that James Bond wasn't Scottish until Sean Connery played the role. Ian Fleming was still writing his series of James Bond novels, and "After seeing Connery in Dr. No and thinking the actor did a superb job, Fleming wrote Connery's heritage into the character. In the book You Only Live Twice, Fleming wrote that James Bond's father was Scottish and was from the town of Glencoe. Coincidentally, Connery would film Highlander in Glencoe decades later." Sir Sean Connery — he was also knighted in the year 2000 — performed many other iconic roles throught his long career, even playing the father of Harrison Ford's character in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Leaving Bond behind, Connery appeared in many historical dramas, including the World War II movies The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, as well as The Man Who Would Be King, The Name of the Rose, and (in 2003) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But throughout his life he was always in demand for high-quality action films, from The Hunt for Red October to The Rock, even co-starring with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the romantic caper film Entrapment at the age of 69. And in Terry Gilliam's movie Time Bandits, Connery appears as more than one character, hinting that beneath the individual roles lay some timeless embodiment of strength and goodness itself.

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"We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses," argues the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy. But while that software faces a DMCA takedown notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), GitHub's owner Microsoft is also a paying member of the RIAA. The Software Freedom Conservancy argues that this leaves Microsoft "stuck between their industry association's abuses of the law and the needs of FOSS projects for which they provide infrastructure." While under current law (which we object to), complying with the takedown notice is admittedly the fastest way to limit Microsoft's liability, we view Microsoft's membership in the RIAA as a much bigger liability to our community, now that Microsoft controls GitHub. We call on Microsoft to resign from the RIAA and remove their conflict of interest in this matter. This is an important opportunity for Microsoft to stand up for the values of software freedom... To build a strong community of FOSS developers, we need confidence that our software hosting platforms will fight for our rights. While we'd prefer that Microsoft would simply refuse to kowtow to institutions like the RIAA and reject their DMCA requests, we believe in the alternative Microsoft can take the easy first step of resigning from RIAA in protest. We similarly call on all RIAA members who value FOSS to also resign.

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Pro tip for BingeWorthy. If a friend asks for ideas on something to binge, share a link to your profile page. It works without being logged-in. It's a smart way to share your favorites, and it also helps spread the word about BingeWorthy, which is nice. This is my profile page. A few more. Leo Laporte. NakedJen, Jake Savin, Liza Sperling, Francine Hardaway, Steve Garfield, Peter Politi.

"Many patients of a large psychotherapy clinic in Finland have been contacted individually by a blackmailer, after their data was stolen," reports the BBC: The data appears to have included personal identification records and notes about what was discussed in therapy sessions. Vastaamo is a nationwide practice with about 20 branches and thousands of patients. The clinic has advised those affected to contact the police. It said it believed the data had been stolen in November 2018, with a further potential breach in March 2019... About 300 records have already been published on the dark web, according to the Associated Press news agency. On its website, the clinic calls the attack "a great crisis". It has set up a helpline and is offering all victims one free therapy session, the details of which will not be recorded. According to the article, the blackmailer claims Vastaamo refused to pay the 40 bitcoin ransom — so they are instead blackmailing individual patients. And one patient even complained that while his therapist took notes in a physical notebook, "he had not been told these would be uploaded to a server."

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Europe "now accounts for 46% of global coronavirus cases," reports ABC News, "and nearly a third of total related deaths." Dr. Jean-Francois Delfraissy, a senior French physician and the president of the scientific council that reports to the government, warned that the country has "lost control of the epidemic," after health authorities reported more than 52,000 new cases. He said that the council estimates that the true figure could well be closer to 100,000 daily cases, accounting for asymptomatic cases and those who haven't been tested... Fearing both the economic price of national lockdowns and the political backlash from citizens increasingly wearied of the restrictions on their livelihoods, government officials around Europe have been reluctant to shutter businesses to the extent that they did in the spring. The Guardian reports that Apple "will temporarily close 17 of its 20 stores in France from Oct. 30, as the country goes into a fresh one-month lockdown due to a resurgence of coronavirus cases." Meanwhile, CNN reports that Taiwan "just marked its 200th consecutive day without a locally transmitted case of the disease," due partly to mass testing but also quick and effective contact tracing. Taiwan's landmark achievement comes in a week when France and Germany are enacting new lockdowns and the United States identified a record 88,000-plus cases in a day. The state of Florida, which has a similar population size to Taiwan, with approximately 21 million people, identified 4,188 cases on Wednesday alone.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Amazon.com said it now has about 1 million employees after hiring 250,000 workers in the third quarter, part of a growth spurt driven by booming ecommerce sales during the coronavirus pandemic and a milestone for a company founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookseller. Despite its rapid ascent, Amazon still has fewer workers than the nation's biggest private employer, Walmart, which has 2.2 million global workers. Even so, Amazon's explosive growth underscores the historic shift in financial might from manufacturers such as General Motors, U.S. Steel and General Electric. In the 1950s, these three corporations were the country's biggest employers, with a combined workforce of more than 1 million employees at the time. Today, the three employ about 400,000 workers as the U.S. economy has shed factory jobs in favor of service-oriented work. In a conference call on Thursday, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company hired "a lot more people to support the strong customer demand." After hiring 250,000 full-time and part-time workers in the quarter ended in September, Amazon has hired another 100,000 workers in October, he said. The jobs pay a minimum of $15 an hour and include benefits such as health insurance, retirement benefits and parental leave, he added.

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A full moon at Halloween is a rare event but this year it is a blue moon which is even more unusual.

The Great Fox-Spider had not been seen since the early 1990s and was feared extinct in the UK.

Apple said on Friday that it's replacing AirPods Pro headphones that have sound problems. CNBC reports: These problems include a static or crackling sound that increases in loud environments and issues with active noise cancellation. Apple said AirPods Pro made after October 2020 don't have the problems. Owners who experience problems can contact Apple online or make an appointment at an Apple store to get their AirPods Pro replaced for free. Only devices that are confirmed to have the issue will be replaced. The replacement applies only to the buds, not the charging case. Apple's not offering a similar program for other AirPod models.

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